My settup is somthing like this. I have included a program that executes and terminates when it is finished. XYNTService then restarts it regularly. iniMonitor is the same code as you provided modified to be used in my setup. Take a look an see if you can spot any diffrences. I have this running on w2k with SP 4 and some updates.

Just a note AutoIt (v3 I'm not sure about v2) dos access the screen as default even as you use Opt("TrayIconHide", 1). But Windows(?) will block display access unless the service is configured to use it.